Timeline
1. February 1-10, 1963 SNCC and Dick Gregory headed a 10 day “GIVE FOOD for FREEDOM in Mississippi!” campaign to break the Greenwood Food Blockade set up by the Laflore County Mississippi Board of Supervisors to starve Blacks who planned to register to vote. Blacks broke the blockade.
2. June 12, 1963 midnight murder of NAACP Mississippi state secretary Medgar Evers.
3. June 23, 1963 Malcolm x “The Black Revolution” Abyssinian Baptist Church, Harlem, NY where Malcolm lit the house up.
4. July 31, 1963 Malcolm wrote to Martin Luther King expressing his concern that ‘the racial powder keg’ in the country would soon explode and invited Martin to speak at the Harlem Unity Rally in August.
5. August 10, 1963. Harlem Unity Rally: Malcolm spoke for nearly two hours at one of the largest civil rights gatherings to that date. Martin did not attend.
6. AUGUST 21, 1963 Malcolm’s mother was “TRANSFERRED FROM VAN DEUSEN HOSPITAL TO SOUTHERWESTERN MICHINGAN TUPERCULOSIS SANITARIUM.” Her family had petitioned for her release for years which were all denied until this sudden transfer. Hilda (Malcolm’s sister) felt that her brother’s continued ‘notoriety’ had something to do with the abrupt discharge.
7. August 28, 1963. March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
8. September 15, 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church
9. September 29, 1963 Elijah announces political plan to influence the 1964 national elections in front of 10,000 in Philly.
10. October 11, 1963 Malcolm’s UC Berkley interview acknowledged The Messenger for developing a political strategy for the 1964 national elections. Malcolm was a felon and could not run for any national office.
11. November 5, 1963 Malcolm and his brothers again requested the release of their mother.
12. November 12, 1963, after twenty-four years, six months and twenty days as a compulsory patient at Kalamazoo State Hospital, Louise Little was released to stay with her family.
13. November 22, 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated
14. December 4, 1963 Malcolm made his infamous comment about ‘chickens coming home to roost’ and all hell broke loose.
15. 1964 The Nation of Islam did not get involved with the 1964 national elections.